As war rages around the country, cultural centers and arthouses are scrambling to save priceless objects from destruction and would-be looters.
When Russian soldiers poured across the border into Ukraine, residents of the northeastern city of Kharkiv rushed to cellars for protection, or picked up arms to defend their homeland.
Valentyna Myzgina ran to the museum.
Just 30 kilometers from Russia, Kharkiv was among the first Ukrainian cities to be shelled. The blasts shattered the Kharkiv Art Museum’s windows, but somehow none of its valuable paintings were damaged by flying glass.
“God saved us,” Myzgina, the museum’s director, told OCCRP. “Neither Repin, nor Aivazovsky, nor Vasylkivsky were injured,” she added, listing paintings by the surnames of their long-dead artists, as if they were still alive within their works. “It’s just a miracle.”
Still, Myzgina knew divine intervention wouldn’t save the museum’s collection from the elements, from more bombs or from looting if Russian forces take the city. With this in mind, she put out a call for help on Facebook and gathered a team of volunteers, some rounded up via Kharkiv’s regional council.
“We took the paintings and found a place to hide them,” Myzgina said. “In the midst of these bombings in Kharkiv, this had to be done.”
Now, the grand hallways once filled with some of Eastern Europe’s greatest artworks sit empty. The smashed windows in drafty corridors are covered only with tarps and tape. Slats of white vertical blinds litter the floor, lying among bits of wood and plaster that were shaken from the ceiling.
Kharkiv is not alone in these efforts. Academic institutions and museums across Ukraine have been working to safeguard collections from Russian soldiers, whose government has denied the existence of a distinct Ukrainian identity.
On Feb. 24, the day Russia invaded, UNESCO called on combatants to respect the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. The convention deems looting or intentional destruction of cultural property in conflict zones to be a war crime.
Sam Hardy, a criminologist focused on antiquities trafficking networks in Ukraine, told OCCRP that some of the same looters who in the mid-2010s pillaged Syria — where the Russian army backed Bashar al-Assad’s forces during a brutal war — were later found in Russian-occupied Donbas and Crimea. Now, it’s feared the same may happen during this new Russian assault.
“One of the concerns that we have to have is the arrival of looters among the invading forces,” Hardy explained. Monitoring Russian-language web forums, Hardy said he’s already seen several posts by known looters announcing that they’ve entered Ukraine.
“We know already that before the escalation there were cases like the icon that got looted from Luhansk and [was] passed through the hands of Bosnian-Serb veterans to the Bosnian presidential representative,” said Hardy.
That case, which drew the attention of prosecutors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, involved a 300-year-old eastern Orthodox icon. The relic was gifted by Milorad Dodik, the ethnic Serb representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tripartite presidency, to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov when the latter visited the Balkans last year.
When a Bosnian Serb news agency published pictures of the gift, experts recognized a seal that indicated it had once been held at a museum in Luhansk. Ukraine believes it was likely looted by Bosnian-Serb mercenaries who fought alongside Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine during the start of the conflict in 2014. Ukraine is demanding its return, but though Lavrov gave the icon back to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dodik has since refused to hand it back to Ukraine.
Looting is seen in almost every war, and the global trade in trafficked art and antiquities is a multi-billion-dollar criminal industry. Looted pieces often reappear at auctions on the other side of the world, or are offered for sale via social media. Facebook groups are among the most prominent markets.
“Social media has played a critical role in facilitating the expansion of online black markets for artifacts,” said Katie Paul, the co-founder of the Athar Project, which tracks online antiquities trading.
Platforms like Facebook provide “new routes to transnational connections for traffickers,” she said. The online platform, she added, “has democratized what was once an underground industry, accessible only to seasoned traffickers.”
Sanctions against Russia are expected to disrupt the trade, but according to Hardy, looters are already discussing how to circumvent these measures. One ploy is the selling of illegal items through intermediaries in neutral countries.
“It might increase costs and it might slow the process, but it won’t block the process,” he said of the new financial restrictions. “It might mean that this stuff simply arrives on the markets later and at a higher price.”
Who are the ultimate buyers of these pieces?
Some will want to be able to show off “trophies from Ukraine’s destruction,” Hardy said, explaining that similar motives drove the illegal antiquities trade from Syria. “We saw material from Syria was being bought by people in Russia, who were primarily concerned with showing … that they could access these goods.”
For those on the prowl, the Kharkiv Art Museum could be a prime target. The museum was founded in 1805 by Vasiliy Karazin, an enlightenment figure of Cossack and Serbian descent who helped make the city a 19th-century center for the arts.
“He brought a unique collection of Western European artists, and then it was like an explosion. Kharkiv residents began to buy works of art in Italy, in the Netherlands,” Myzgina said.
With local artists soon inspired by their surroundings, a special section was later devoted to Ukrainians like the aforementioned Ilya Repin, Ivan Aivazovsky, and Serhii Vasylkivsky. The museum later housed works by Soviet-era figures like Leonid Tkachenko.
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